Eclipse RCP - what exactly is a headless build?

Question

During an Eclipse RCP Project I hear about the "headless build".

• What exactly is a headless build?
• What is a headless build for Eclipse RCP?

Answer 1

A headless build means, that you can run a build without starting the graphical user interface of Eclipse. For that, you have a build script (in case of Eclipse headless, it's an Ant script AFAIK), which you can start via command line, and thus it's possible to start the build on a server without graphical interface. Lars Vogel has a good tutorial on that.

Answer 2

There is a short, but good tutorial from Christian Pontesegger, how to create a simple headless Eclipse RCP application: http://codeandme.blogspot.de/2012/02/creating-headless-application.html